In 1970, the Women’s Technical Committee set the competitive age limit at 14. One year later, they issued an explanation of sorts. It included a warning to members, recognizing that abusive methods were leaving child gymnasts damaged. By setting the age limit at 14, their hope was to see more “mature work” that displayed a “woman’s charm.”
Here’s what was recorded in the 1971 FIG bulletins about the question of age in women’s artistic gymnastics.
Typically, when Americans tell the story of Nadia Comăneci, they start with the 1975 European Championships or the 1976 American Cup. But the truth is that Comăneci made a name for herself in Europe much earlier. One of her first triumphs was at the 1972 Olympic Hopes/Druzhba (Friendship) competition.
If you’ve read Comăneci’s book, Letters to a Young Gymnast, you might recall a brief mention of the competition:
On the heels of failure came my first success, at the 1972 Friendship Cup. Our team’s gymnasts were only ten years old. All gymnasts from the other countries were in their late teens and early twenties. Bela and Marta hadn’t even known how much younger we were before we arrived at the competition because they’d never seen the Soviet gymnasts, let alone the Czechs or Germans, compete. We walked into the arena, tiny little girls with pigtails, facing the likes of Lyudmila Turischeva, a long-legged and unbelievably graceful gymnast from Russia.
[…]
I won the all-around gold at the Friendship Cup. The team won the silver. We had done the unthinkable, beating the best international gymnasts in the world.
Letters to a Young Gymnast
To be sure, Tourischeva did not compete at this meet, female competitors had to be 16 or younger (not in their early 20s), and Comăneci did not win the all-around at the 1972 competition (she did in 1973). That said, her first major success indeed came at the age of 10 in Sofia in 1972, and it paved the way for future international successes — long before the Montreal Olympics.
So, let’s take a look at what was written about the competition in 1972. It was a different time — a time when the Romanian newspapers didn’t know how to properly spell Comăneci’s surname. Nevertheless, the Hungarians could see that Romania was a rising power in gymnastics:
[W]e must keep an eye on the sporting careers of Romanian gymnasts over the age of 10 in the coming years if we want to keep pace with the development of women’s gymnastics.
Sportélet, Sept. 1, 1972
Note: Noting the factual errors in Comăneci’s book is not a dig at her. If you asked me about details from when I was 10, I would probably get some of the facts wrong, as well.
Note #2: The title of this post spotlights Comăneci because it’s part of a series of posts on her early career.
From 1956 until 1962, Larisa Latynina seemed unstoppable. She won the all-around at every major gymnastics competition: the 1956 Olympics, the 1957 Europeans, the 1958 World Championships, the 1959 Europeans, the 1960 Olympics, the 1961 Europeans, and the 1962 World Championships. (The Soviet Union did not participate in the 1963 Europeans.)
But her luck changed in 1964 when Věra Čáslavská won the all-around gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and Latynina had to settle for silver.
After the Olympics, just a few days shy of her 30th birthday, Latynina had to settle for silver once again at the USSR Championships. This time, she lost to 15-year-old Larisa Petrik, a gymnast half her age.
This was a watershed moment in the history of women’s gymnastics — not simply because it marked the beginning of the end of Latynina’s dominance but also because it marked a shift in women’s gymnastics toward younger gymnasts.
While there had been teenagers at major international competitions after World War II — 16-year-old Čáslavská, for example, became a crowd favorite when she won team silver at the 1958 World Championships — Petrik’s victory was different. The Soviet Union was the indisputable leader in women’s gymnastics, and for over a decade, their teams had relied primarily on adult women. Then, in 1964, a teenager became the best gymnast in the country and was victorious over someone who had seemed unbeatable internationally for years.
Note: From 1956 until 1962, there were several domestic competitions that Latynina did not win, including the USSR Championships. But this was the first time that she lost to a gymnast half her age.
The news of Petrik’s win made headlines in many of the Soviet Union’s prominent newspapers. In this post, we’ll look at some of those news accounts from December 1964.
Note: For men’s gymnastics fans, don’t worry; the news articles do touch upon the men’s competition, as well.
From April 23, 1971, until April 26, 1971, gymnasts from around the world gathered in the capital of Latvia for the inaugural Riga International. The competition took place a couple of weeks before the men’s European Championships, so the top European teams were reluctant to send their top gymnasts. Nevertheless, Japan sent one of its top gymnasts: Nakayama Akinori.
On the women’s side, Tamara Lazakovich won the all-around, but much of the attention centered on 13-year-old Nina Dronova, who performed a rare double full on floor. A fall on an aerial front walkover on beam kept Dronova off the all-around podium, but she bounced back to win two gold medals during the event finals.
Reminder: At the 1970 Congress, the FIG lowered the competitive age to 14.
Why is our national team suddenly so young? It seems to be a recurring question in the Soviet press in the late 1960s, and there were several explanations.
In an article from 1967, one writer suggested that it’s because the Soviet Union was trying to keep pace with the likes of Věra Čáslavská, who made her international debut at the age of 16 at the 1958 World Championships in Moscow.
The articles from 1968 told a different story.
In the first article below, the explanation will sound more familiar to today’s gym nerds. It has to do with the presumed innocence and naïveté of female gymnasts before they reach adulthood.
In the second article, Larisa Latynina offers a slightly different rendition of the rise of the teenage gymnast.
And finally, we’ll take a look at an Estonian article about Larisa Petrik and what she reportedly did with her pigtails.
While Olga Korbut and Nadia Comăneci are often credited with ushering in the era of teenage gymnasts, that’s not the origin story that circulated in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
Back story: The Soviet Union had relied on adult women in their 20s and 30s for their gymnastics teams. At the 1958 World Championships, their youngest gymnasts were 21 (Astakhova and Kalinina). Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, brought a teenager who had star power.
Čáslavská’s debut: In 1958, 16-year-old Věra Čáslavská made her international debut, winning a team silver at the World Championships in Moscow. And, as the tale goes, it was in that moment that the Čáslavská piqued the interest of the spectators and Soviet coaches alike.
What follows is a translation of a May 20, 1967 article from Неделя (Nedelia), which was the Sunday supplement to Известия (Izvestii︠a︡). (Thanks to Nico for his assistance with the translation.)